Daze, a creative, AI-powered messaging app for Gen Z, is blowing up prelaunch | TechCrunch
On TikTok, Daze’s most popular video has been viewed 8 million times. Across TikTok and Instagram, the startup behind a new messaging app aimed at Gen Z, has seen around 48 million combined views. Pre-launch, the app’s waitlist is already bursting with roughly 156,000 signups.
Driving the demand for this next-generation alternative to iMessage and WhatsApp isn’t some smooth-talking influencer or paid advertising, but simply product demo videos of the app in action, which have impressed a younger audience.
In addition, the app is currently leveraging AI to help power some of its creative tools; it plans to deeply integrate more AI-based technology in the future.
“Our goal with Daze has been to make a feature complete messenger that is competitive with iMessage, WhatsApp, etc., while still having a suite of really fun and creative features,” Simons told TechCrunch. “You can quickly type a message and press send, or drag the message anywhere within the chat. It is easy to use and utilitarian, but also very free and unconstrained.”
This isn’t the first time Simons has experimented with this idea. For several years, ending in 2022, he was working on an app with a similar vibe called Muze. Like Daze, Muze redesigned mobile messaging as a free-form canvas for creativity with a similar set of tools. But while Muze was jointly founded by Simons along with Douglas Witte and Grant Davis with Fenner Stevens as CEO, Daze is solely Simons’ project.
